Kenner had nothing to do with Gobots. Bandai (Japan) and Tonka (US) produced them.

Since the previous right owners haven't done anything to retain ownership, we've already seen some Gobots homages in the Movie toy lines as well as some name re-uses, like Leader One, Armada Megs' minicon.

I agree though, Gobots are a must. A top-hat wearing Tux would be the shit.

Hasbro can assign the Gobot names to new characters (Minicon Leader-1), or release redecos that homage specific Gobots (movieverse Fracture), but they may not necessarily be able to do both for the same toy for legal reasons - like release a helicopter robot and name him Coptur.

I could be wrong about that last part. Maybe the creative team at Hasbro simply think some of the Gobot names are crummy, and opted to use different names instead.

Doesn't Hasbro OWN the Gobot name? There were a bunch of G2 "spychangers" that were called Gobots. I'm reasonably certain that Hasbro bought the rights to Gobots and can therefore use whatever names/likenesses that they please. I imagine that they just thought that Crasher was a dumb name (because it is).

I'm sure I read it somewhere, but as Hasbro own Tonka, they also own the rights to any characters that were developed for the Gobots line. However the toys themselves were licensed from what would become Bandai, an opposition of Hasbro and Takara.

revenge of the fallen: Stalker Scorponok loo ks similar to gobot's Skorp. maybe its a homage?

I would love to buy a universe Waterwalk. It's beige, Something very neutral and cool about waterwalk, I suggest its his wing stickers and the reflective dashboard controlls that have me attached. Here is a link.

I was a gobot fan as a kid...I suppose for the nostalgia factor it would be cool. I would like to see some of their alt modes revisited, like a submarine, a Harrier, limo...and the mosters were pretty fun.

i had the wildcat plane, the submarine, bugbite, some crappy scorpion thing and a few whose names i can't remember. i also had LOADS of rocklords for no apparent reason (including both big ones) and even at that early age i'd decided they were generally on a par with cindersaur for shitness and relegated to teh second-string toybox.

i have no idea how i came to own so many awful toys - probably for the same reason i told my mum i wanted Manta fucking Force rather than an AT-AT.

I totally disagree. The small Gobots (hot wheels sized) were far superior, in most cases, to Transformers of similar size. I love that we've gotten a few Gobot homages in the last few years and I'd love to see more, even if they are just repaints.